Introduction

Drawing on data from a broader study of the effect of economic, social, political and geographical issues on clerical prosperity in Dorset throughout the century, this chapter examines how the county’s landscape and topography impacted on seventeenth-century clergymen’s prosperity, security and mobility.¹ Having first established the broad context of Dorset’s parochial landscape and income, it then relates these issues specifically to clergymen’s experiences in the turbulent 1640s and 1650s. In this respect, the 1650 parliamentary surveys of parochial livings are a particularly valuable source, revealing connections between the landscape and persecution. These are complemented by data from the 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus and a later glebe survey, which provide more detailed breakdowns of ecclesiastical income, while evidence from glebe terriers, wills and inventories sheds light on incumbents’ actual land usage and other sources of income.² Patterns of sequestration, ejection and survival between the Civil Wars and Restoration are then examined in the context of landscape differences.

The Dorset landscape and its impact on parochial experiences

In a well-known description of seventeenth-century southern England, John Aubrey distinguished between two major types of landscape, ‘chalk’ and ‘cheese’. According to Aubrey, in the downland or chalk country ‘the shepherds labour hard; their flesh is hard, their bodies strong’, whereas in the ‘dirty clayey country’ where ‘they only milk the cowes and make cheese … their persons are generally plump and feggy’.³ David Underdown’s study of cultural and political differences in seventeenth-century Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset was based on this distinction between sheep-corn (chalk) and wood-pasture (cheese) husbandry.⁴ However, his analysis of popular allegiances revealed that although the ‘chalk’ areas were more likely to be royalist and the ‘cheese’ areas parliamentarian, north Dorset was atypical, and as Ann Hughes observed, this basic dichotomy ‘cannot do justice to the complexity of English economic and settlement patterns’.⁵ This chapter therefore presents a more detailed analysis of parish-level landscape differences.

Thomas Gerard’s Survey of Dorsetshire, written in the 1620s, followed each river from west to east, ‘even from their Springs and Fountaines, untill they take up their Lodgeing in the Ocean’.⁶ Nevertheless, in common with other county histories written with influential patrons in mind, he focused on manorial rather than topographical issues, ignoring obvious landscape features. The most extensive early description of Dorset at a parochial rather than county level was by John Hutchins (1698–1773), a clergyman himself, whose familiarity with the landscape is evident.⁷ For example, he observed that the soil of the downland parish of Bradford Peverell ‘consists of gravel and chalk, arable and pasture, but near the river is much meadow ground’, while Buckland Abbas in Blackmore Vale ‘is mostly arable land, and pasture for sheep, but the lower part is used for grazing and dairies and is much inclosed’.⁸

The mixed geology of Dorset creates a wealth of different landscapes in a comparatively small area (around ninety kilometres east to west and sixty kilometres north to south). Forty-six per cent of parishes are mono-geological: many downland settlements lie on largely undifferentiated chalk soils, while the heathlands around Poole harbour are almost entirely sandstone based. However, in the north, the low-lying land is clay but is pierced by limestone ridges, where most settlements are situated. The south coast from Portland to Bridport is similarly mixed, and the Isle of Purbeck has a spine of downland separating heath from clay.

For this study, detailed examination of the predominant geology of the 289 seventeenth-century Dorset parishes resulted in their classification into five landscape regions: Blackmore Vale (84 parishes), West Dorset (39), downland (120), heathland (27) and South Dorset (19) (see Figure 4.1).⁹

Blackmore Vale, a ‘cheese’ area of wood-pasture husbandry, still has deep lanes and the small fields characteristic of former woodland. Gerard described it as ‘verie subject to Durt and foule Wayes’, and John Leland’s journey between Caundle Marsh and Sherborne was ‘3. miles by enclosid and sumwhat hilly Grounde meately welle woddyd’.¹⁰ West Dorset, the other ‘cheese’ area of clay landscape, was described by Gerard as ‘rich and well stored with Woods, by means whereof it affordeth convenient dwellings’.¹¹ The largest landscape area is the ‘chalk’ downland, which stretches in a wide band across the county, with settlements along the valleys of the Cerne, Piddle, Tarrant and Allen, and along escarpments where springs emerge. There were few habitations on the open downland where sheep-corn husbandry was practised, and following the dissolution, major landowners amassed very large flocks of sheep, leading to the desertion of many downland villages. For example, Gerard described Winterborne Farringdon in 1634 as ‘a lone Church, for there is hardlie anie house left in the Parish, such of late hath beene the Covetousnesse of some private Men, that to encrease their Demesnes have depopulated whole Parishes’.¹² The south-east of the county around Poole harbour and the Isle of Purbeck consists mainly of heathland, described even in the early nineteenth century as ‘a most dreary waste’ used for ‘the support in summer of a few ordinary cattle and sheep, and the heath which is pared up by the surrounding villages for fuel’.¹³ Finally, the South Dorset region, comprising the south of Purbeck, the Isle of Portland and the villages close to the south coast from Portland to Burton Bradstock, lies on a mixture of limestone and clay but is hillier than Blackmore and is exposed to the maritime air.

Impact of parish terrain

In Blackmore Vale, winter flooding was a major issue. Hutchins referred to the church at Caundle Bishop as standing ‘in a very dirty, watery place, far distant from any other’.¹⁴ The 1650 parliamentary surveys provide several indications of Blackmore parishioners’ problems in getting to church during adverse weather conditions. The chapel of West Orchard sought separation from the mother church of Fontmell Magna because ‘by reason of the height of waters in the winter season … the passage betweene them two is impassible’.¹⁵ Several chapelries, situated wholly on wet clay land in the middle of Blackmore Vale and watered by tributaries of the River Stour, had been established as chapels of ease because in wet weather it was so difficult to get to the mother churches of Fontmell Magna and Iwerne Minster, which were situated on higher ground on the periphery of the Vale. However, the parishioners of Iwerne Minster complained about the proliferation of chapels: ‘wee have more Churches built alreddy than wee are able to maintaine’.¹⁶

A similar problem was experienced by the villages of East and West Stour, between which was ‘a great river that often overflows, whereby there is noe convenient passage from one place to the other’, so ‘the Minister cannot serve both Cures at seasonable times’.¹⁷ Motcombe, another Blackmore chapelry, sought to be established as a parish church, ‘there being noe other church or chappell nearer to it then the said Church of Gillingham, the road thereunto from Motcombe in winter season by reason of floods is unpassable’.¹⁸ At Kington Magna, too, part of the parish was ‘a mile away from the church and inaccessible when the waters are high’.¹⁹

In more extensive or elongated parishes, parishioners expressed difficulty in getting to church owing to its distance from their homes rather than the terrain. For instance, at Folke in 1635, ‘most parishioners do not come to divine service on holy days in regard their houses are too far distant from the church’; and in nearby Haydon, five people were presented for non-attendance in 1619 because ‘they dwell three miles from the church’, and two in 1628, who ‘inhabiting att Boy’s Hill, within the precincts of our parish and distant from our parish Church about fower miles, doe very seldome frequent our parish Church … but onely frequent the parish Churches which are neere adjoyning with them’.²⁰

Some problems were no doubt attributable to incumbents’ failure to appoint curates to outlying chapels where travelling was difficult. For example, in 1684, John White, vicar of Yetminster (not the famed Dorchester ‘patriarch’), was presented by the churchwardens at the dean of Salisbury’s visitation for not celebrating divine service in the chapels of Leigh and Chetnole every Sunday, but only ‘on every other Sunday, except when he was sick, from home or the waters up’.²¹ There was evidently some tension between amalgamating parishes to enable suitable preaching ministers to serve the cure, and employing curates to maintain weekly services.

It was also clearly no coincidence that the dean of Salisbury’s visitations took place in July when the roads were more passable. Indeed, in 1560, the archdeacon of Dorset had delayed visiting until summer, ‘when both the time of the yere and also opportunite for that purpose will serve better’.²² Even so, the journey to attend visitations was not always easy. Robert Lane, rector of Hermitage in Blackmore Vale, sent his apologies to the dean in 1638, since ‘at the last visitation in this place, I adventured to ryde on a side sadle … but I was not able to endure the miles ryding homeward’; he was taken down from his horse, which was led home while he had to ‘creepe home … in greate payne & misery alone there after’.²³

The 1650 survey responses for West Dorset, the other clay area, reveal fewer examples of travelling difficulties than in Blackmore. However, the 250 inhabitants of Shipton Gorge, a chapelry of Burton Bradstock, claimed that they were ‘not able to travell to Burton Church … the waies thither unpassable at winter by reason of dirt’. Similarly, at Stanton St Gabriel, the parishioners were struggling to attend the mother church of Whitchurch Canonicorum more than two miles away, ‘along a road exposed to such violence of wind and weather’.²⁴

In contrast to the two wood-pasture areas, parishes in the remaining landscape regions reported no travelling difficulties in 1650, indicating that such problems were confined largely to the ‘cheese’ areas.

Value and use of glebe land

Clergymen were intimately bound up with the landscape through their entitlement to glebe land. During the middle ages, ‘there were very few parishes, apart from those of recent creation, which did not have at least five or ten acres of glebe’, which would have constituted a small peasant holding.²⁵ The 1650 surveys sought overall valuations rather than descriptions of glebe land, seeking to ensure that the income was sufficient to support able ministers, although some responses do provide more detail. For instance, in the downland region, Bincombe had ‘glebe land of meadows, arable and pasture’, and at Askerswell there were six acres of pasture ‘upon the gleabe’ and fifteen acres of arable ‘in the Common field upon the same gleabe’.²⁶

Further detail can be gleaned from two relatively complete valuations of glebe land. In the first, the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, sixty-eight per cent of parishes in Dorset were recorded as having at least some glebe land, although glebe terriers reveal that, for some, this consisted of no more than the parsonage house and a small garden, as in the West Dorset village of Burstock.²⁷ The second full glebe survey was not carried out until 1887, by which time some glebe had been augmented by Queen Anne’s Bounty, and some had been altered through enclosure, often converting strips of common-field entitlements into closes.²⁸ Although the 1887 survey does not specify how glebe land was actually used, it does reveal that its yield varied considerably between landscape types: almost £3 per acre in West Dorset and around £2 in Blackmore Vale and South Dorset, but only £1 10s per acre in heathland and downland parishes. Therefore, both the location and quantity of glebe land had a significant impact on clergymen’s income.

Two major sources of evidence, glebe terriers and inventories, shed light on individual clergymen’s land usage rather than income. Of the 102 Dorset parishes for which seventeenth-century terriers or similar documents survive, the majority were produced for the archbishop of Canterbury’s metropolitical visitations in 1612 and 1634. There was also a spate of terrier production in the early 1660s as incumbents sought to re-establish parochial entitlements following the Restoration. These terriers list land and property belonging to the Church which incumbents could either farm themselves or rent out. Many specify land use in terms of arable, meadow, pasture and woodland, and disclose whether the landscape was enclosed or still had common fields.

The terriers reveal that all glebe land in West Dorset was enclosed, as it was in Blackmore Vale except for a few rights to common pasture at Minterne Magna, Stockwood and Sutton Waldron, and common fields in Marnhull and Over Compton. In contrast, the glebe in most downland and South Dorset parishes was in common fields, sometimes in numerous pieces. Common-field farming survived longer in the chalk parishes, raising issues for clergy whose glebe was distributed in small parcels across different fields. For example, the terrier for Cattistock lists twenty-two parcels in the north, middle and south fields, as well as pasture for sheep and cattle on the down. At Langton Long Blandford, another downland parish where the rector had one small close of pasture, the rest of the glebe consisted of meadow land in the ‘Town meadow’, various acres of ground in the north, middle and south fields, and common pasture for cattle and horses in the marsh and for sheep on the downs.²⁹

In heathland parishes, glebe was more mixed, with both common and enclosed land, as well as sizeable coppices at Bloxworth and Morden. For example, the rector of Studland had four small closes of glebe land, two small areas of meadow and twenty acres of arable in two common fields, plus common of pasture for 120 sheep ‘to have their feeding in the fields and heath’ and horses and rother cattle ‘in the heath, so many in the summer as he can winter’.³⁰ Like other heathland parishes, he could take as much furze and turf as he needed for fuel, and was also allowed ‘frith from the wood’. The mixed nature of his glebe and the fuel allowance were advantageous; however, glebe had accounted for only six per cent of the parish valuation in 1535, and his total income amounted to only £50 in 1650, confirming the poor yield on heathland.³¹

Terriers provide a snapshot of land use at a particular time, but do not usually indicate whether the incumbent was farming the glebe land himself, or indeed making any profit from it. In this respect, probate inventories, which were drawn up post mortem to establish the value of individuals’ estates, can be used to determine the types of activities in which they were engaged, in terms of farming implements and stores of grain and other crops, as well as wealth in leased property and debts owing. Annabelle Hughes found that between a half and a third of Sussex clergy inventories listed stock and/or crops. She noted that this must relate to farming of the glebe, but cautioned that their amount would have been affected by when in the agricultural year the inventory was taken.³² Margaret Spufford also cautioned of the limitations of inventories since they list only leased land and property, whereas if a corresponding will also survives, this may specify land and property actually owned by the individual.³³ Inventories survive for only six downland parishes out of 120, and for very few heathland or South Dorset parishes. Many more survive for the Blackmore Vale and West Dorset ‘cheese’ regions, indicating that the incumbents of these parishes were wealthier and left more substantial estates.

One downland parish for which relevant evidence does survive is Blandford St Mary, one of the more valuable livings in Dorset. In common with most other downland parishes, it had little glebe, accounting for only 5.43 per cent of the value of the living in the 1535 parish valuation.³⁴ However, William Sutton’s inventory, taken in 1635, lists arable, meadow, pasture, woodland and rights to common pasture, and in his will, he bequeathed to his children large sums of money, as well as ‘small quilletts of land I have purchased in Dorset’. This land, rented to various tenants, comprised at least sixty acres of arable, as well as several acres of meadow and pasture, common pasture for 264 sheep, fifteen cattle and three horses, and various closes, meadows, leazes, pasture, woods and underwoods.³⁵

Sutton’s successor, John Crooke, held multiple livings and several administrative posts in Winchester, and had family connections with the patrons of the living.³⁶ John Pitt, who succeeded Crooke in 1645, remained there until his death in 1672, by which time he had acquired the advowson. In his will, he entrusted all lands, tenements, debts, goods, reversions and chattels to his brothers to dispose of at their discretion among his children, indicating that his property was considerable.³⁷

Other inventories from downland parishes confirm that, perhaps because these livings had little glebe land, their incumbents tended to derive personal wealth from other sources, as well as serving more than one cure. For example, Abel Selley, rector of Winterborne Tomson for twenty years until his death in 1661, left an inventory totalling £110, of which the most valuable items were books worth £10, plus £45 due to him on bonds and other debts.³⁸ At Spetisbury, William Zouch’s estate was valued in 1680 at the huge sum of almost £4,000, most of which comprised ready money and various types of credit; and Zouch’s successor, Benjamin Crosse, formerly vicar of Holy Trinity Cork, was owed over £1,200 in bills, bonds and debts in London and Ireland.³⁹

At Maiden Newton, William Huish’s 1685 inventory lists the impropriate tithes of Dunsford, Devon worth £170, a house in Maiden Newton worth £60 and debts of £69 owing to him, as well as farm goods. Also listed, alongside some ricks of hay and a dung cart, is a coach. This and an unspecified number of horses suggest some opulence, as these were ‘trappings of affluence’, and records of clergy owning them are rare.⁴⁰ For example, Peter Heylyn owned a coach and horses, and initially held onto them when sequestered, but subsequently had to sell them to survive.⁴¹ The evidence from downland parishes thus suggests that their incumbents tended to be sponsored by wealthy local gentry or had influential family members, enabling them to purchase property, while close ties with local gentry were characteristic of the strength of manorial authority in downland villages.⁴²

Similarly to the downland parishes, those in West Dorset tended to have little glebe land. For example, Chardstock had none, and its tithes were worth only £40 a year in 1650. Nevertheless, James Keate, rector from 1669 until his death in 1704, left the ‘lease of the new parks in the parish of Chardstock’, valued at £150, and property in several other locations.⁴³ At Wambrook in 1685, John Chase left a large inventory of goods at properties in Dorset, Devon and Somerset valued at £461, and was owed £267 in debts. Chase had succeeded his father at Wambrook, and had certainly profited from his family wealth despite sequestration in 1645.⁴⁴ These West Dorset parishes had little glebe land, whereas the 1650 survey for Symondsbury, the most valuable parish in Dorset, lists about 146 acres of glebe to the value of £120, with tithes worth another £190 per year. The advowson was purchased for Walter Newburgh by his mother in 1618 before he had even taken clerical orders, and in addition to being born into an armigerous family, Newburgh married (successively) the daughters of two MPs, and bequeathed various lands and rented properties in Dorset.⁴⁵ As for the downland areas, the evidence for West Dorset thus indicates that most incumbents had little glebe land on which to rely, and that those who thrived had wealthy family and invested in land and property.

Many more inventories survive for Blackmore Vale than for other regions, including a series for three successive rectors of Beer Hackett. John Downton, appointed in 1577, was a local man. Although his will includes bequests of land and property in two neighbouring parishes, his inventory lists only a few household items valued at £20, with no animals or farm equipment. His successor, Nicholas Jefferies, was appointed in 1626, but two years later the churchwardens reported that ‘our parson is not resident uppon his parsonage’. Jefferies’ inventory of 1636 lists estate to the value of £79, including wheat and oats growing upon the ground worth £40, as well as animals, various plough stuff, and a cart and wheels. He was clearly involved in farming, although he may not have been resident in Beer Hackett.⁴⁶ Hugh Strode succeeded Jefferies in 1637, and was sequestered in 1646, having allegedly been plundered of the enormous sum of £5,000 in money and ‘an incredible quantity of plate and jewels’ (this may have been exaggerated, but nevertheless indicates considerable wealth). He was restored in 1660, but died two years later. His inventory, totalling £31, includes £14 in bonds, £4 for a mare, and ‘a parcell of small bookes which the plundering rebells left him’.⁴⁷ Neither Downton nor Strode were graduates, but both were local men who had amassed land and money, although Strode had been stripped of most of his. Jefferies’ family background is unknown, and his inventory lists no property, but he appears to have been personally involved in farming.

Few inventories survive for heathland parishes. Bere Regis has some higher land but comprises predominantly heathland, and in 1650, total income from the living was estimated at below the median value of £60 for Dorset parishes. Thomas Bastard, vicar of Bere Regis from 1593, had led a chequered career. At Oxford, he had been described as being ‘a most excellent epigrammatist, and being always ready to versify upon any subject, did let nothing material escape his fancy’.⁴⁸ Having been accused of libel and forced to leave the university, he received support from the Earl of Suffolk for appointments to two heathland parishes, Bere Regis and Almer. Yet despite trying to supplement his income by publishing epigrams, including one bemoaning his poverty, he died in debt in Dorchester prison in 1618, leaving an inventory valued at only £16, half of which was for ‘133 books in a chest’. A study of books was also the most valuable item left by Thomas Basket, another incumbent of Bere Regis, in 1665. His inventory mentions no farming equipment or produce, apart from ‘Three thousand of turffes’, which would have been dug from the heathland.⁴⁹ The evidence for heathland parishes is therefore scanty, although the absence of surviving inventories suggests that the incumbents left little wealth. There are no surviving inventories for seventeenth-century incumbents of South Dorset parishes.

In summary, those incumbents of downland and West Dorset parishes for whom inventories were made tended to have influential patrons or wealthy family, enabling them to invest in property and engage in money lending and other activities. The absence of glebe meant that most did not engage directly in farming. The survival of a larger number of wills and inventories from Blackmore Vale suggests that a greater proportion of incumbents in this region were sufficiently wealthy to have property to bequeath. Self-sufficiency was perhaps easier here, given the enclosed nature and higher yield of the glebe land. In contrast, incumbents of heathland parishes derived little income from the land, and either lived in relative poverty or, like Thomas Bastard, turned to more creative ways of supplementing their income.

Tithe income

Few 1650 survey returns distinguish between glebe and tithe income, but details of the latter are given in the Valor Ecclesiasticus. Total tithe income amounted to 68.24 per cent of all Dorset income recorded in the Valor, whereas glebe income accounted for only 9.21 per cent, the remainder being received from oblations and pensions.

In Blackmore Vale, the median value of parish tithes was £6 13s 4d, with a maximum of £28 at Stalbridge where tithes accounted for eighty-one per cent of the rector’s income. In the downland parishes, the median was higher, and several parishes yielded more than £25 in tithes, but fortunes in this area were more variable, as five vicarages produced no tithe income for the incumbent at all since the tithes were payable to impropriate rectors. The median for heathland parishes was only £7, with no parish yielding more than £20 8s per annum, and that for South Dorset was £7 13s 3d, with only one parish worth more than £16 in tithes. These figures are broadly in line with expectations, given the previously mentioned variations in yield in the different landscape regions. However, surprisingly, West Dorset had the lowest median tithe valuation, at only £5 2s 8d. The populous parish of Netherbury provided tithe income of £31 12s but the rest as little as £1, although all parishes in this region had at least some tithe income.

Terriers for several parishes note that monetary payments were customary in lieu of tithes. In some cases, tithes relating to specific lands or farms had been commuted. For example, in the West Dorset parish of Pilsdon, all tithes were paid in kind except for those from the manor farm, worth £13 6s 8d per annum in 1535 and reputed to be worth £8 out of a total parochial income of £30 a year by 1650.⁵⁰ The rector therefore relied heavily on payments by a single farmer, which might be risky in case of any dispute, but would be advantageous if these payments were reliable since it meant chasing fewer individual tithe payers. At Buckhorn Weston in Blackmore in 1634, five shillings were paid annually ‘in lieu of all tithes of certain grounds called Cowparke’, but this accounted for only a small proportion of the total income of around £50.⁵¹ In the downland parish of Portesham, two farms nearly three miles east of the village made fixed annual payments: in 1650, the parishioners noted that Friar Waddon farm paid ‘but 40s yearly’, whereas Corton farm paid in kind at the rate of three lambs and three fleeces.⁵² Again, this may have been advantageous to the vicar since it would have been difficult for him to monitor and enforce payments from more distant residents.

More commonly, tithes in kind were substituted with flat rates on specific types of tithable produce, known as moduses.⁵³ These were prone to reduce in value as a result of inflation, as acknowledged by John Cowell in 1607, who observed that monetary payments were ‘very unreasonable in these daies, when both lamb and calves are growne four times dearer, and more then they were when this price was first accepted’.⁵⁴ Moduses in Dorset were most frequently agreed in lieu of milk from cows and heifers. In the dairying regions of Blackmore Vale and West Dorset, parishioners paid two or three pence per cow and somewhat less for a heifer. For example, Matthew Perry, rector of Silton in Blackmore, confirmed in a 1637 terrier that there was ‘an absolute perfect Custome for cowe white’ of two pence per cow and one penny per heifer.⁵⁵ By contrast, downland parishioners tended to pay only one penny per cow, confirming their lower milk yield, and there are no recorded instances of moduses applied to any other produce in this region, apart from one penny per garden plot at Godmanstone. Surviving terriers for heathland parishes mention no moduses and are relatively unspecific about particular types of produce, referring only to corn, wheat and hay. Similarly, terriers for South Dorset parishes do not mention types of produce, apart from detailed arrangements for fish caught in Portland, but tend to name specific farms and holdings from which tithes were due.

Much more information is provided by terriers for the ‘cheese’ regions, which frequently list a wide range of produce, including apples, hemp, flax, hops, turnips, honey, wax, geese, ducks, turkeys, eggs, pigs, lambs, sheep, kine, horses and colts. As a perishable form of produce, eggs appear to have been a particular source of annoyance for incumbents. Some parishes specified that a penny was due annually for eggs, often at Easter. At Buckhorn Weston, tithe eggs were due ‘on Good Friday if demanded’, suggesting that the rector might not insist on his entitlement; whereas at Sutton Waldron, the rector claimed he had never received tithe eggs for thirty-two years, and had then been paid for two years together, at three eggs for a cock and two for each hen.⁵⁶ He did not record how many eggs this amounted to, but it had been sufficiently irksome for him to note it in the parish register. Despite the wooded nature of the ‘cheese’ regions, only one terrier, for Hazelbury Bryan, mentions tithe of ‘stock or board wood’, in this case as an exception, as the rector was allowed only three pence per acre rather than its true value.⁵⁷

The 1650 parliamentary surveys are generally silent on the nature of tithe produce, except where special arrangements had been made. For example, the chapelry of West Milton in West Dorset received tithes due from the sinecure of Witherstone on wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, thatch, hemp, flax, hay, cow white (milk, butter and cheese), calves, sheep, wool, hogs, colts, apples, hops and gardens.⁵⁸ It appears, therefore, that the greater detail of Blackmore Vale and West Dorset tithe entitlements may have resulted from the potential for evasion owing to the more diverse nature of the tithable produce and the distributed settlements in this landscape, whereas produce from the nucleated villages of the downlands was more easy to survey, with fewer small landholders.

In a few cases, subsequent incumbents managed to reverse disadvantageous modus agreements. At Buckland Newton in Blackmore, William Lister succeeded in revoking an unusual modus allegedly introduced by the parishioners in a 1634 terrier, by which cheese was due in lieu of all tithe of cow white from three tithings, ‘to be delivered when stiff and fit to be carried’.⁵⁹ Nathaniel Napier, appointed rector of the previously mentioned Blackmore parish of Sutton Waldron in 1686, recorded a long list of tithe customs in the parish register in order to safeguard the rights of future incumbents, writing that ‘experience has confirmed to me, which I communicate to you, viz. that twill be much to your disadvantage to be over-familiar with your neighbours at first coming’. For example, he had succeeded in renegotiating tithes on milk and calves: ‘The parishioners have pleaded a Custome of paying 2d per Cow for milk; the left shoulder for a Calfe kild at home; but we are now agreed that the Rector shall receive 1 shilling for each Cow in lieu of Milk and Calfes.’ He advised his successors ‘at yr Perill to make yrselfe truely M^r of these Directions that so you may not be abused or foold by these unmannerly Clowns’.⁶⁰ However, despite their potentially declining value, moduses may have been more convenient in terms of both collection and disposability of income. They were certainly easier than the experience of William Hastings, rector of Burton Bradstock in West Dorset, who died in 1635 as a result of an argument while trying to claim his tithe lambs.⁶¹

Persecution

Having examined variations in clerical income by landscape region, this section investigates the extent to which the landscape may have affected clergymen’s experiences during the 1640s and 1650s. Seventy-five incumbents were sequestered from eighty-five of Dorset’s 289 parishes between 1642 and 1659, amounting to approximately twenty-nine per cent of the total (see Figure 4.2), over half of whom (forty-four) had been restored to the same living by 1662.

Furthermore, three sequestrations in Blackmore Vale were for very short periods. Edward Davenant, rector of Gillingham, was sequestered in 1645 but restored by the county committee two years later, and William Bisson’s sequestration from Shillingstone, purely on account of his old age and sickness, was also overturned.⁶² The most surprising case was of Thomas Bravell, rector of Compton Abbas, who was sequestered ‘for joininge with the Country in the clubb business’, having allegedly led a rising of 4,000 Clubmen on Hambledon Hill on 4 August 1645. Clubmen were groups of countrymen who rose up against the depredations of both royalist and parliamentarian soldiers, whom they accused of damaging crops and looting local inhabitants. According to a parliamentary source, the Clubmen of Hambledon Hill carried banners on which were written ‘sentences of Scripture, profanely applied by their Malignant Priests, who were the principal stirrers up of the people to these tumultuous assemblies’. Those arrested and questioned claimed that Mr Bravell himself had issued the warrant for their gathering.⁶³ However, the following year he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Oxford, and in April 1647 was restored to his living on the testimony of three godly divines.⁶⁴

Some of those sequestered – six from downland parishes, three from West Dorset and three from Blackmore Vale – managed to secure alternative cures while awaiting the Restoration. In Blackmore, Richard Gillingham, ousted from Lillington, was permitted to serve the cure of Pulham; while Matthew Perry, sequestered from Silton in 1647, was reported to be still officiating there in 1650, ‘but by whose permission we knowe not being an outted minister; Mr Parry makes use of the glebe, and the tythes are sequestered into the hands of two officers’.⁶⁵

Overall, analysis of the percentage of parishes affected by sequestration in each landscape region suggests that incumbents in South and West Dorset were much more likely to be sequestered (with thirty-seven and thirty-eight per cent of parishes affected, respectively) than those in other parts of the county (between twenty-two and twenty-nine per cent). The figure for Blackmore Vale drops from twenty-nine to twenty-seven per cent if the three aforementioned short-term sequestrations are discounted, while the heathland parishes were generally rather poor livings, as previously discussed, perhaps reducing the incentive for sequestration. The relatively high figures for South and West Dorset might suggest that there was greater support in the south and west of the county for puritan values and the new emphasis on preaching. However, the parishes of South Dorset were close to the garrisons of Portland and Weymouth, and West Dorset was within the purview of forces at Lyme Regis, by whom Gamaliel Chase, rector of Wambrook, was plundered, supporting Ian Green’s suggestion that sequestrations were more prevalent in the vicinity of parliamentary garrisons.⁶⁶

Nevertheless, twenty-eight Dorset incumbents survived in the same livings from prior to the outbreak of war through to the Restoration (see Figure 4.3). A geographical pattern of survival is clearest in Blackmore Vale, where twelve incumbents (fourteen per cent) survived throughout this period. Although based on fewer parishes, the survival rate in South Dorset parishes (twenty-six per cent) is surprisingly high. Away from the port towns, other coastal parishes remained relatively unaffected. In contrast, only one incumbent survived in a heathland parish (West Parley), and two (five per cent) in West Dorset. The latter were the small parish of North Poorton, and Stockland with Dalwood chapel, which was a Dorset enclave surrounded by Devon.

Following the Restoration, sixty-two ministers were ejected from their livings (see Table 4.2).

In twenty-three cases, this resulted from the return of a formerly sequestered incumbent, and a further twelve also departed in 1660 or 1661. Twenty-seven were ejected in 1662, undoubtedly for non-conformity, since all who were still alive in 1672 applied for non-conformist licences.⁶⁷

Figure 4.4 illustrates the preponderance of ejections in West Dorset, affecting forty-nine per cent of parishes in this area, with a high proportion also in South Dorset. Furthermore, in West Dorset, six sequestered incumbents were restored, and a further five ministers were ejected in 1660 and 1661, outnumbering the eight who departed as a result of their failure to subscribe to the Oath of Uniformity in 1662; and in South Dorset, five out of six of those ejected departed in 1660, with only one expelled in 1662. This strongly suggests that, in these regions, unwelcome ‘intruders’ who had been placed in parishes during the interregnum were ousted as soon as possible at the Restoration.

With regard to the effect of garrisons, the South Dorset parishes of Portland and Wyke Regis quickly removed their intruded ministers, yet George Thorne, in the adjoining parish of Radipole and Melcombe Regis, remained there until 1662 and was the only South Dorset minister ejected for refusing the Oath of Uniformity. In West Dorset, Ames Short also held on until 1662 in Lyme Regis where, ‘Being much respected by the neighbouring gentry he was often and strongly urged to put aside his scruples.’⁶⁸ Thus, although the presence of garrisons may have influenced sequestrations in the 1640s, by the 1660s some ministers subsequently appointed to these parishes had gained local support.

The percentage of ejections was very much lower for Blackmore Vale, at only twelve per cent. This was perhaps because some replacements for sequestered incumbents had been nominated by the patrons of the living rather than being inserted by the county committee, making them more acceptable to the parishioners.

Three long-standing incumbents who survived the Civil Wars and interregnum in the same parish lost their livings for failing to take the Oath of Uniformity in 1662. These were William Benn, rector of Dorchester All Saints since 1629, Henry Martin, vicar of Tarrant Monkton since 1627, and Hugh Gundry, rector of Mapperton in West Dorset since 1640. Benn had been a stalwart of Dorchester’s puritan regime, and in a post-Restoration pamphlet listing what might be viewed as divine punishments on those refusing to use the Book of Common Prayer, he was said to be suffering a ‘monstrous chin-cough, which would make any that hears him, doubt theres a shrewd core at his consience, for his subscribing to the Kings tryall … and other hainous crimes, besides his great slip at Oxford, that all his Hah-hings cannot remove’.⁶⁹ Benn was clearly unpopular with the new regime, and Daniel Sagittary later reported that he had stolen a plate from Queen’s College and had remarked on the Restoration ‘Lord send us better News of Heaven yn we had by the Post, or we are all undone!’⁷⁰

Gundry had also been in favour during the interregnum, having received a payment of £10 from the county committee in March 1647 for his ‘constant and paynefull labours’, but was ejected in 1662 following a visitation by the dean of Salisbury, when he failed to produce his ordination papers and refused to subscribe to the oath.⁷¹ Mapperton had had puritan-inclined rectors for over half a century. In the late 1590s, Gundry’s immediate predecessor, George Bowden, had been presented by his parishioners for refusing to wear a surplice and not standing at the name of Jesus, and in 1607 the parishioners had complained that ‘Our parson does not wear any cappe according to the latest canon.’ These were indications of puritan leanings, yet Bowden had continued to serve the cure, despite being censured by the dean of Salisbury.⁷² Gundry’s appointment in 1640 followed in the same tradition. However, it was one thing to have puritan tendencies in a remote parish prior to the Civil Wars, but Gundry’s active patronage by the interregnum regime made him more visible to both judicial and ecclesiastical authorities. Having raised his head above the parapet of relative seclusion, the new political climate of 1662 brought about his ejection.

Cross-county mobility

Earlier in this chapter, some evidence was presented relating to parishioners’ and clergymen’s experiences of travelling relatively locally, including Robert Lane’s difficulty in returning from a visitation. However, William Huish must have used his coach to travel further afield, and Hugh Gundry’s payment of £10 from the county committee in 1647 also suggests the necessity for clergymen to travel beyond their own parishes. In Gundry’s case, the county committee recorded that ‘through and by reason of plundringe his goods and losse of the profitts of his parsonage for his affeccon to the Parlyarment in these late troubles [he] hath not an horse to ride on’.⁷³

Nevertheless, evidence from 215 wills and inventories suggests that clergymen in West Dorset, where Gundry lived, were less likely to own horses than in the downland and heathland parishes. Horses, saddles or riding apparel appear in only four out of thirty-five West Dorset records (11.43 per cent), compared with twenty per cent of heathland and sixteen per cent of downland parishes. None of the eight available wills and inventories for South Dorset mention horses, and the figure for Blackmore Vale is just under fourteen per cent. Thus, horse ownership appears to have differed by landscape type, with heathland and downland perhaps being more conducive to keeping and riding the animals, particularly given the relatively unenclosed nature of the landscape. This is confirmed by evidence from glebe terriers. In Blackmore Vale, only five terriers mention provision for horse pasture, and the vicar of Sherborne, whose glebe amounted to only his house, garden and stable, was ‘permitted to keepe his horse in the Churchyard, Abby Lytten or Abby greene’.⁷⁴ Similarly in West Dorset, the only mention of horses is in Wambrook, where the outhouses included ‘a stable to conteyne ffower horzes’, and where the rector, Christopher Marraker, left his ‘baye Mare’ to his wife.⁷⁵ Wives are also mentioned in two heathland wills, with a wife’s ‘pillion Saddle and Saddlecloathe’ at Owermoigne and ‘my wife’s Riding Suite and best wastcoate’ at West Parley.⁷⁶ However, only one heathland terrier, for Studland, makes reference to horse pasture on the heath, whereas several South Dorset terriers mention commons for horses, although the latter probably included animals for ploughing rather than riding.⁷⁷ Horse commoning occurs much more frequently in downland terriers, often providing for two or three horses in the common fields or leazes, although once again, rather than for riding, the terrier for Bradford Peverell specifies ‘the depasturing of fower Hallers [haulers], whether they be Horses or oxen … in all Commons, pastures, meades and stubbles’.⁷⁸

An interesting indication of the extent of cross-county communications in Dorset during the interregnum is given in a letter from Dorset MP John Bingham, of Melcombe Bingham in Blackmore Vale, to secretary Thurloe in 1655. Writing to report suspicions of conspiracy against the Cromwellian regime, he suggested that people were gathering from as far afield as Beaminster in the west and Canford in the east. In particular, they were drinking at Cashmore Inn near Blandford and watching cockfighting in Wimborne. Many of the participants were ‘yong blades, well horsed, habited, and each a man waiteinge on them’, but the older gentry and clergy were also involved, including Thomas Bragge, vicar of Horton. According to Bingham, ‘At yong squire Hid’s at Horton, 8 miles from Blandford, is one Bragg … He it was, that betrayed Portland castel to the caveleers at the first of our wars.’⁷⁹ Bragge’s predecessor at Horton had died in 1647, and he had been presented to the living by Giles Greene, a puritan sympathizer. However, Greene died in 1655, and Bragge was sequestered the following year, having lost his protective patron. All the parishes mentioned in this letter, apart from Beaminster, are in the downland and heathland regions. This confirms the potentially greater mobility of incumbents in these areas, but perhaps also their greater visibility and susceptibility to surveillance where enclosure was less common.

Conclusion

This chapter has focused on the extent to which the landscape was a potential determinant of clergymen’s prosperity, through a more fine-grained analysis than a simple chalk/cheese dichotomy. The nature of the landscape evidently affected clergymen’s experiences, in terms of the ease with which they themselves could get around their parishes and further afield, and parishioners’ church attendance. Classifying the landscape in this way has also highlighted other landscape-related factors, such as the productivity of glebe land and the yield and collectability of tithe income. The analysis has revealed that the values of livings and clergymen’s ability to live on income from agricultural activities varied considerably by region, as did the availability of alternative sources of income. Patterns of sequestration, ejection and survival were also partly attributable to the nature of the landscape itself, in terms of soil type and topography, which affected the value of livings and the social structure of parishes. Poorer heathland livings may have been less attractive targets for sequestration, whereas incumbents in South and West Dorset were much more likely to be sequestered, perhaps owing to their proximity to garrisons. Nevertheless, South Dorset also harboured the highest proportion of interregnum ‘survivors’. Overall, stability was greatest in Blackmore Vale, where there were relatively few sequestrations and ejections and more long-term survivors. Little surprise, then, that despite the difficult terrain, and the military depredations that led to the Clubmen uprising in this area, an old Dorset native in the mid-twentieth century was heard to say that ‘Cromwell could not conquer this part of the country, “Dirty Do’set”’.⁸⁰

T. Gadd, ‘The impact of the landscape on the clergy of seventeenth- century Dorset’, in Church and people in interregnum Britain, ed. F. McCall (London, 2021), pp. 87–109. License: CC BY-NC-ND.